14 DAY TRIAL // Every company, just like human beings, must have an identity of its own. This is achieved through the company policy, quality standards, products, market segments it addresses, logo, brand, etc. Some of the enterprises (in fact most of them) have strict rules concerning the access inside the company area. In order to grant the access to its employees they are given IDs that contain some elements to prove that the person who uses the ID is actually an employee of that company.
Advanced ID Creator-Enterprise is an Xpress Software Inc shareware product that costs $199,99. The installation file will take 4,38 MB of your disk space. Installing the software is easy and poses no problems.
The software is developed for creating cards, badges, IDs in general for companies (ergo Enterprise). For a fast designing the user can profit from a previously created database that is stored by the application.
The first time you run Advanced ID Creator Professional you will be asked to set a username and a password for the software. The next step is logging into the program (retype username and password). At the beginning there will be only one administrator of the program, called Supervisor, who can later assign new users and rights.
The application window contains the Template and Background windows in the left, the card windows (face side and back side) in the middle and the Fields and Properties windows in the right.
In the Templates window there are displayed the available templates. The templates have a default background and a set of elements (Photo, Signature, Fingerprint, Text) associated with it. You can change the background from the Background window. Changing the background will not affect the elements in the template. The user can also add new templates and new backgrounds.
The application window contains the Menu, Drawing Toolbar, Button Bar, Status Bar, Background, Card (face and back side), and Property.
The menu bar contains the File, Options, View, Photo, Signature, Biometrics, Bar-code and Help menus. In the File menu the user can open a .crd file, save a card, print preview, etc.
I called the Options menu the security menu because here you can set the passwords, usernames and access rights for the other users. This menu has three sections: General, Database and Users. I will talk only about the first one as it comprises the other two.
In the first tab of the General sub-menu you have a view option. Here you can choose if you want to see the ruler and the grid on the card. These options are for a better fitting of the elements in the card area. In the Database tab the user defines the path for the database.
What database? Well, you can create a database of the employees of the company. We'll talk about that in the Fields window description.
The third tab in the General sub menu is the Users one. Here the Supervisor can assign rights and roles for the other users. The supervisor can give the right to card design, card print or both. S/He can also assign the role of the new user (can set it to supervisor or simple user).
The View menu contains viewing options. You can choose to view or hide everything except for the Card windows.
The Photo, Signature, Biometrics and Bar-code menus contain authentication options. These menus allow the user to add a photo to the ID, a digital signature and a fingerprint. You can set the bar-code automatically. For all of these security related elements the user must have the files in an electronic database.
The Fields area has two tabs: Fields and Database. In the first one you can change the default options (first and last name, company name and job position) for the employees of the company. You can also add new database fields (like "department", "merits", "bureau", "stage", etc.) about any employee.
In the Data tab the supervisor can modify the database, add employee info, edit info and delete info. For large databases there is the "search" option that allows looking for a certain employee by ID, first name, company name, etc., basically by whatever you have in the Fields tab.
The Properties window displays the features of the element selected in the card. So, if you want to ad some text to the card, select the Text option in the Drawing bar and type the text. At first the text area will have the default properties (color, alignment and font). After entering the text in the required field you will notice that you can make modifications in the Property window.
You make your own font and text color settings and you can even edit the text. For text properties the user can also set a rotation degree. The Font options are style, size, color, script, effects (strikeout and underline) and you can choose the font you want (over 40 fonts).
In the Drawing toolbar the supervisor will find some elements s/he can add to the ID card. From here you can add text, shapes (both round and square) that can be filled with different colors and applied with width dimension, lines (can also be added colors). The other options in the Drawing toolbar consist in adding the elements of the ID (photo, picture, signature, fingerprint and bar-code).
The Good
AID Creator Enterprise does a good job in creating the IDs. It is easy to use as the interface is not complicated at all. You just have to come up with something to make it as close to your company identity as possible.
I especially enjoyed the biometrics, bar-code and digital signature options. These are very simple security elements that do a great job.
The user can add as many backgrounds as s/he wants as they are just .gif format image files.
Before adding a picture the application gives you the chance to crop it a little. You can also resize the picture so that it fits just fine.
The Bad
I think that the price is a little too much. Of course, you can do an ID in a matter of seconds, but still, $200?
I would have enjoyed it even more if the application would have had an image editing option that allowed the user to create gradient backgrounds and share his/her imagination.
The Truth
The software is really amazing in designing new ID templates. In my opinion it covered almost every element a badge should have. You can add logos, insert backgrounds, photos, pictures, text, shapes, etc. But to be frank, I was also hoping for a gradient background option.
The database is easy to create and you can add to it lots of new fields. The grids and ruler really give the software a professional touch.
I repeat, the price in my opinion is a little too much, although there has been major discount of over 50% (from $499,99 to $199,99).
The software comes into three versions: Personal (freeware), Professional ($49,99) and Enterprise. You can imagine the differences between them.
You can use Advanced ID Creator Enterprise for a trial period of 30 days, then you can decide whether to buy it or not. During this time the software is fully functioning.
Unfortunately I couldn't test the printing option.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
